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For nearly five decades, Museum Services, Inc. (MSI) has been a premier name among art handling companies, trusted by museums, galleries, private collectors, and institutions. Since our founding in Minneapolis in 1976, we’ve specialized in comprehensive fine art services, treating each project with the professionalism, precision, and personal touch our clients deserve.
Museum Services, Inc. was founded by Russell Belk, a passionate advocate for the fine arts who identified a need for reliable fine art transportation, shipping, and handling solutions.
What began as a local service to fill a critical gap in Minneapolis’ art community has since grown into a full-scale, renowned provider of fine art logistics, installation, framing, crating, storage, and conservation.
At Museum Services, our vision is to provide our clients with an effortless experience, allowing them to focus on what matters most by relieving them of the stress of art handling.
We treat every project with the utmost respect, ensuring that each piece is handled with precision, dedication, and attention to detail specific to the object’s material.
Every client interaction is rooted in our commitment to solving problems and facilitating, with a personable and approachable attitude.
We cultivate deep, lasting relationships with both clients and employees, fostering a consistent and reliable service experience.
Our team’s decades of experience and inherent and learned talents drive exceptional, museum-quality service.
We aim to alleviate stress by handling all logistics, ensuring clients can trust us to manage their artwork.
We pride ourselves on building long-term relationships with our clients. Each service we provide is tailored to meet individual needs, taking into account every unique aspect of the artwork in our care. At MSI, we believe that the process of art handling should be as seamless as it is professional, giving our clients peace of mind in every step of their fine art journey.
Whether you are a private collector, an art lover, a designer, an artist, an appraiser, an architect, or a representative of a museum, a gallery, an auction house, or a corporation, we are here to take the stress of art handling off your plate.
To support artist Tia Keobounpheng’s traveling art exhibit, MSI designed a custom frame to display both sides of a 6’ x 4’ artwork. The frame was customized to allow for disassembly and reassembly as the piece was handled and transported.
Museum Services organized and executed the transport and cleaning of a 12.5 ton granite statue across the Twin Cities. "Billy Bison" by artist John K. Daniels was moved from downtown Minneapolis to Allianz Life Insurance Co. in Golden Valley in 2001. Our highly experienced team led the careful rigging and transport of the sculpture to MSI where our restoration team brought this sculpture back to life, removing decades of suit and grime. To conclude the project, MSI handled the rigging and re-installation of the massive artwork where it still sits today.
In collaboration with Flying Fish Exhibitions, MSI designed and fabricated custom artifact mounts and crates for the "Mysteries of the Deep" traveling exhibition. The MSI team took great care in the design, fabrication, and installation of the mounts. Our crating department followed suit with our Museum Level crates using archival materials, cavity pack design, and climate protective finish, gasketing, and hardware throughout, ensuring the safe travels of these precious artifacts.
Museum Services offers seasoned professionals when it comes to collection inventory, preservation, transportation and installation or your artworks. Managing private collections can be challenging as our lives inevitably change. We are here to provide a highly organized and seamless flow for any transitions around your collection.
Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC partnered with MSI Framing to fabricate custom frames for a selection of works in their George Morrison Retrospective, "The Magical City: George Morrison's New York". Morrison’s work evolved over the years, but we created one cohesive style of frame that complemented all eras of Morrison's work. Within MSI's Frame shop, our technicians designed and built the custom frames by hand and fit them with Optium acrylic glazing, ensuring safety throughout the exhibition and travel.
When the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) was relocating to its new building in downtown Minneapolis, MSI managed the deinstallation and packing of over 200 artworks from its previous 14-floor building. During the transition, MSI provided temporary art storage for the collection while additionally framing a curated selection in preparation for the installation in the new building. MSI continues to assist with managing their art collection across multiple locations.
Let Museum Services, Inc. handle the complexities of fine art logistics with expertise, respect, and professionalism. Whether you’re transporting a cherished piece across the country or securing long-term storage for a valuable collection, we’re here to provide you with unparalleled art handling services.
We offer installation and packing, framing, and storage for our clients in the Twin Cities, and art crating, shipping, and shuttle transportation for national and international needs.
Contact us today for expert fine art services.
